Sacrifices
by baconandmalec
Summary: Transgender Remus Lupin. Unfinished one-shot. Ending is a bit abrupt, so I may finish it one day. Life at Hogwarts, being trans. Deals with eating disorders.


Remus' Hogwarts letter arrived on the kitchen table during breakfast on the 18th of July, 1971. His parents exchanged glances and whispers. His family was one of the few that year that Dumbledore visited in person. Lyall and Hope sent an owl back, full of questions that needed to be answered in order for Remus to attend Hogwarts. Rather than answering via owl, Dumbledore knocked on the front door the following morning.

Remus looked up in wonder when Hope invited him to join them for breakfast. This was the first wizard he had seen for years other than his father! He could practically smell the magic he carried with him. Remus knew this is the person he wanted to  
grow up to be.

"Where will sh... he sleep?" Remus' mother asked, lines drawn on her forehead for a brief second when she messed up.  
Dumbledore acted as if he didn't notice. "He shall sleep in whichever dormitory he feels more comfortable in."  
They were all seated around the small kitchen table, but they were talking as if Remus wasn't there.  
"I'm a boy." He said, just loud enough to be heard. Heads turned to face him.  
"I want to stay in the boy's dormitory." A little louder.  
"Then it is settled." Dumbledore smiled. Remus smiled. He was going to Hogwarts. He finally had a chance to start fresh, to introduce people to Remus, and not Romilda.

In his first few days of Hogwarts, he met three boys. They were loud, they were in his face. He didn't want them to get too close to him. Boys didn't want girls in their room.

Then Remus laughed at one of their jokes. And answered a question they had about the homework. And then they slept in oneSaturday morning, and he snuck them each a small portion of breakfast.

And so they adopted him into their boisterous little group. And suddenly he didn't mind them being in his face so much.

James loved Quidditch. He dragged them to the school matches and commentated raptly for them. Sirius took enough of an interest and Peter pretended to know what was happening.

Sirius loved motor cars. He showed him the pictures he had cutout of Muggle magazines. James pretended that Muggle inventions were useless, but Remus could see him listening attentively when Remus answered Sirius' questions.

Peter loved his friends. He clinged to the thought they accepted him and wanted him. Remus eventually discovered that he had been rather isolated, attending Muggle school in favour of his muggle mother before attending Hogwarts. Remus wanted to  
admit that he felt the same, yet he didn't want the questions that were bound to follow.

Remus loved books. James, Peter and Sirius didn't. He shared his sanctuary, the Library, with them once. Remus did his Potions homework, and they looked up spells. They took out a book of jokes and pranks, laughing behind their hands.

Over the course of the next week, Sirius and James could be seen trying out Jelly-Legs charms and spells to make the other's tongue grow, Peter sitting nearby encouragingly. It turned into somewhat of a competition, sometimes ending with one of  
them pushing it to the extent of sneakily attempting a spell of an unsuspecting classmate.

One morning, Remus woke up with his hair grown out past his waist. He felt the weight as soon as he sat up, and then saw Sirius and James sitting on the bed across, faces red with the effort of trying to hold in their laughter.

"Oh, Remus, you look like a girl!" Peter cried, happy to comply with Sirius and James, and then they felt backwards onto the bed, clutching their stomachs and giving in to the laughter.

Remus felt his eyes fill with tears and he ran to the bathroom. He tore open the drawers and found a pair of scissors. Haphazardly chopping off his hair took him back to when he was little, attempting to do the same with safety scissors, giggling  
because he thought it was funny. And then to just over a year ago, tears falling down his face in the same pattern as they did now, another pair of scissors in his hands, in front of a different mirror.

Refusing to come out of his bathroom back home, in fear of what his parents would think. Would his father take it as a mistake and magically grow his hair back for him? Would his mother sigh and tell him how short hair is unladylike?

Now, standing in front of the Hogwarts mirror, there was no one here to fix the back of his hair cut with experienced hands. There was no one who would understand why Remus was crying.

In second year, Remus went to Madame Pomfrey after waking up with blood in between his legs. He was lucky, he thought later, that he first bled when his friends were still asleep. He got in and out without fuss, and set about cleaning his sheets,  
hating his body even more this morning, than usual.

Not long afterwards, Remus felt his body getting softer. He pulled out a pair of jeans that were still supposed to fit and Sirius made fun of his now less subtle hips, and a little chub on his tummy. Remus learned a spell to make his clothes grow,  
and from then on, his robes were just a bit too big for his body. Just enough to hide growing hips and the small protruding lumps on his chest.

At the end of Second Year, James broke his arm in a Quidditch Match. Remus visited him privately once, and stole some bandages when Madame Pomfrey wasn't to be seen and James was knocked out under the effect of potions. He learned how to strap  
down his growing chest, sacrificing the ability to freely breathe. It was worth it.

During the summer holidays in between Second and Third Year, Remus went camping with his friends, on the edge of James' vast property. It was new, it was exciting. He went along, thinking that despite the circumstances, he would manage to keep  
his secret.

There was a small waterhole nearby, and Sirius was determined to get them all in. James and Peter were not reluctant whatsoever, stripping to boxers, as the sun beat down on them. And so it was curious as to why Remus was. He finally allowed himself  
to sit on the edge, with his feet sitting underwater, watching James splashing Peter and Sirius, Sirius lying with just his face sitting above water and Peter enjoying every minute with his friends. Remus told himself that he was content with  
this. He was not.

In Third Year, Remus was sitting on Peter's bed, helping him write an essay for History of Magic. Of all his friends, Remus could most relate to Peter. He was he only person who would not judge Remus when he felt like blubbering, or felt like  
lying in bed all day, or when he wanted to binge on chocolate (for reasons much different than Peter's, little did Peter know). And so, in an almost silence, in which you could only hear the two boys breathing and the scratching of Peter's  
quill on the parchment, Remus couldn't bear the literal and metaphorical weight on his chest.

"Peter?"  
"Yeah?"  
"I was born a girl."  
Peter looked up, frowning in confusion. "What do you mean?"  
Remus took a deep breathe.  
"I am a boy. But I have a girl's body."  
Peter nodded. "Okay." Then he looked a little angry. "Are you only telling me this because Sirius and James already know and I don't?"  
"No! No, no. They don't know. Please, you mustn't tell them" Remus looked a little frantic.  
Peter only nodded again. "Okay. I don't really understand what has changed. You're still a boy?"  
Remus nodded. "Yes. The same boy you have always known."  
"Okay." Again. "That's okay."  
Remus smiled and the quill scratching resumed.

At the end of Third Year, Remus woke up in the middle of the night. He was aching. His heart was aching, his body was aching, and was so sick of hurting. He crept to the bathroom, careful not to wake his friends, and stood in front of the mirror.  
He took his shirt off. He had noticed that binding had not been helping as much as it used to. That it was getting a little more obvious. Maybe if he was just a little skinnier, then he wouldn't have to bind so much. Yes, he decided. That  
was the problem.

When they returned from the holidays in between Third Year and Fourth Year, Remus was admittedly skinnier. Now, when he took his shirt off, he could see the deformed ribs just below his breasts. James asked if he was okay. Remus bit the inside  
of his cheeks. Peter asked what the matter was. Remus said nothing. Sirius pulled him aside, looked him up and down, and Remus broke down.

When his three best friends were watching, Remus had to eat. He swallowed portions of food, felt it sliding down his throat. A month into the term, he woke up in blood. And the crashing realisation that he hadn't bled in how many months? Four?  
He needed to lose all that weight he had just put back on.

Remus was standing in front of the all-too-familiar mirror, wearing just his binder and underwear. He was done with the reflection he saw. He stared long and hard, and then punched the mirror. He felt the glass shatter beneath his fist, and shards  
of glass dig into his hand, stomach and arms. He was lucky it missed his face. He heard shards hit the tiles. Only moments later, someone was knocking on the door, urgently.

"Remus? What was that sound? Remus, are you alright?" It was James. And then the door handle turned and the door was being pushed opened, and somebody was standing there, eyes widened and backing out of the room, stumbling over a collection of  
words. "Shit- shit, sorry, Remus..."

But before James could close the door, Sirius came bounding in, wand ready to fix Remus' mistakes. Like someone always was.

And so some time passed, where Remus sat down and stared at the mess he had made, and then he realised that Peter was cleaning the blood off of him with a damp, the only boy there that was used to his body by now, and Sirius was waving his wand  
towards the glass and the mirror and then eventually his wounds. And James was still standing in the doorway, unsure.

Peter was lifting his arms and tugging a shirt over his chest. Remus stood up and someone handed him pants, and he pulled them on himself, relieving everyone of the shame they would've faced. He hung his head.

"Why didn't you tell someone?" James said uneasily.  
"I did. Peter. And Dumbledore knows. And McGonagall."  
"Peter knew?" James said, raising an eyebrow. Peter nodded weakly.  
"If you want me gone, I'll get out of here." Remus said, quickly.

James opened his mouth to respond.

"No." Sirius said. "I want you here. _We_ want you.

Remus looked back towards James. He nodded. "Look, mate. It's going to take me a while to get used to. But you're still our beat friend. We aren't letting you get away." He took a breath. "And... if I say something stupid, just tell me to shut up."


End file.
